Assassin KoS questions ...

Discussion in 'General TLE Discussion' started by Haun, Sep 3, 2019.

  1. Haun New Member

    KoS will be launching soon on Kaladim. Just looking for some tips from experienced assassins on must do quests, must have gear. I have noticed that AM gear is best for t5 and t6. But looking ahead at KoS gear, I see that most of the end game gear for predators is lacking that stat. General tips and tricks for parsing well at 70. Also what is the best raiding AA build?
  2. Zenji Well-Known Member

    By soon you mean in 4 weeks?
  3. Venser Active Member

    You're still looking at your scout basics. I assume KoS will have some more MA gear. Since you're an Assassin you have an OP amount with your buff already. So you are probably looking at DPS mod first since AB mod is lacking. Crit is probably on every piece of gear so you're fine there. AB MOD > DPS > MA > Haste . Pot and crit on everything, not much AB mod around. We will probably close to double our pot now in dof. You might be able to reach near 80+ MA full time on the sin, dont quote me on that. 116 is the 100% MA soft cap.

    Looking at 6 sec delay weapons still, you might be able to get away with a different ranged weapon depending on mob tuning. Your big hits are your back / stealths, auto attack and caustic poisons next. I havent played a sin since like 2007 so I wont be much help in a casting order.
  4. Adoninilol Well-Known Member

    Reroll Rogue.

    If that doesn't interest you, get to soft cap MA (Master villainy, put on a few pieces of gear with it), then stack haste gear. You get lots of DPS mod from coe/inq/mystic/dirge/zerk. If you're not getting that setup, you're not gonna parse well anyways; so it's pointless to have an assassin.

    Ability mod is disproportionally itemized on gear so any item with reuse/haste is infinitely more powerful than ability mod unfortunately. If mobs also last about as long as they do now, ability reuse is useless. You gotta really play it by ear.

    As far as combat goes, press death mark on cooldown, use masked strike/ambush on cooldown, time autos, use concealment chain whenever up for the remainder of your stealth attacks. Auto attack can go off in the middle of the concealment chain and it puts you into stealth, and is a dps increase to do so.

    If you can't get stealth assault/massacre in use them with stalk/masked strike whenever up. I'd prioritize stealth assault over ambush even on single target assuming it can last the full duration.

    Time death blow sub 33%.

    I'd also see if you can get a timer for holy shield/tortoise shell depending on your setup so you know when you don't have to joust, and make sure your healers actually use it on you. This is of course also pointless if mob's don't hit hard.

    Poison's: make sure one scout is using each of the stat debuff poisons, warding ebb, strength etc. Caustic > Hemotoxin. I believe the haste debuffs stack between tiers? (Unsure, but pretty sure) For AA's I wouldn't bother with any of the endlines, just get crit from str, potency, aoe auto, poison damage, and then use the rest on whatever you feel like really.
  5. Naneeje Well-Known Member

    On Kaladim, with no AA's, it's been tricky with Concealment. I must be missing something on Kaladim because I've only played on live servers, but I have never had to play an Assassin with zero AA's. This puts you into Stealth, but for some reason, not effectively and not often enough. There was some trick back in the day macro'ing your Auto attack to a CA, but I honestly don't remember what it is. So for now, playing with no AA has been tricky, but fun.
    When I use Concealment, I always go for Caltrops to put me into Stealth, remember that it reads "On your next CA", which means you have to hit something to get into stealth, quick and always works. I've hit Impale, Torture, Gushing Wound, and had them all fail.
    The problem is after my first Combat Art, I will see all my stealth go dark, still behind mob. SO something is kicking me out of stealth and it happens quite often. Still looking into this. Standing still helps, but not always.
    Good cast order for Assassin will always depend on group.
    Noxious damage dealers in group or raid? Get Caltrops out often, massive Noxious damage debuff, but once mob is with group or raid, just hit it once every 20 seconds.
    Lead off with Torture, physical damage debuff. Surprisingly, all your stealth attacks are melee/slash/piercing. Most people think it's disease or noxious, but it's not. It's physical. So having raid/group that debuffs physical damage a lot, (Coercer, Guardian, Inquisitor) will really bump your dps.
    Typical Raid mob for me, there are a lot of points to consider.
    Everything below assumes a raid boss with an add or two.
    ***Note, on some mobs, the tank needs time to settle in with raid boss, so I'll stay back and apply Deadly shot, Head Shot, and Spine shot, all ranged attacks, all transferring hate through Murderous Design to the tank for support.***
    By the way, paralyzing Strike and Improvised Weapon should be on the side of the hot bar. When you have low reuse, you will run out of combat arts, these two are crap on your parse, so just hit them when nothing else is up.
    Pre-pull, when mob is charging in, (Deadly focus and Honed Reflexes), and then hit (Slip Away, puts you into out of combat Stealth).
    Stealth Assault, Masked Strike, Massacre, (Two blue's)
    Settle in with Caltrops, Torture, HO, Death Mark, Gushing Wound, Impale, (all DOT's, (Damage over time, Debuff over time). Crippling Strike, Lore and Legend Strike, (forgot name). DOT's are in.

    Assassins throughout all content for EQ2 refer to the Combat Art "Concealment: as the "Concealment Chain". In future expansions, we get some really helpful AA's that make hitting almost impossible to miss, but for now, we get Concealment which doesn't always work if you get stunned, stifled, anything. The order is dependent on what is refreshed. I would take time to learn the casting order recast timers, these can really help you organize your hot bar better.

    Every 300 seconds: Assassinate. 6k base. As your highest damage, (26k for me), you only get this once every 5 minutes.
    Every 180 seconds: Mortal Blade. 3k base.

    When everything is up every 5 minutes, my order looks like this:
    (With Honed Reflexes and Deadly Focus just applied), Concealment, Torture, Stealth Assault, Massacre, Assassinate, Mortal Blade, Eviscerate, Jugular Slice, Ambush, but you will be lucky to get them all off without losing stealth.
    Some items have the same timer so keeping them together is a good idea. Sort of a priority casting order meaning if it's up, cast it!

    Every 60 seconds: Concealment - Massacre - Eviscerate - Stealth Assault - Ambush
    Every 30 seconds: Stalk - Stealth Assault (Stalk puts you into stealth, Stealth Assault is 600 + (100 six times over 12 seconds), up to 8 targets, plus, even on one target, it hits harder than Ambush.
    Every 10 seconds: Masked Strike - Ambush. You will use this 4-5 times between Concealment chains.

    Masked Strike - Massacre, if there is still some adds, I will cast Masked Strike and then move up to Massacre instead of Ambush. Ambush is like 600 dps when Massacre is 1,000 dps. But, if concealment chain is incoming, stick to Ambush.
    I'd love to hear what other Assassins have figured out with no AA. It is interesting not having all the perks end game Assassins have fun with.
  6. Naneeje Well-Known Member

    You get 50 points when KoS launches at the end of October.
    Depending on how they set it up, the five choices in your subclass tree, (Predator) will need an AA mirror depending on AOE fights or single target fights.
    Smokebomb is great in the Wisdom tree, along with the strength tree of Perfectionist. Lower reuse and an extra AOE is always nice.
    But, you will only have 50 points and you can only take 2 lines:
    1 point in Bounty at the top to unlock all five tree lines.
    22 points into each of these lines to get the 4th art, (Look up EQ2U and go to AA on your character to see what's coming, we will be getting 50 points in the "Predator" tree tab.)
    Strength, Perfectionist, you can get Assassinate and Mortal Blade a lower reuse time, (Smoke Bomb too if you take it). If you are big on Concealment chains, Obfuscation reduces Stealth/Stalk to zero cast time, this is really good for your every 60 second casting chain.
    Agility, Poise, increase your casting speed by 35%, usually worth it until gear catches up, but you run out of arts to use. Higher potency, in combat run speed.
    Stamina, Impenetrable, good health boost, great parry but it's the 28% AE Auto that draws you into this line.
    Wisdom, Smoke Bomb, great AOE, especially in Concealment chain because you will always get Assassinate off after Smoke Bomb because it puts you into stealth even if the Concealment chain is broke. And again, paired with Strength line can get some really good Concealment chains. Especially if fighting a lot of AOE fights.
    Intelligence, Intoxication, crafted poison damage increase, Noxious debuff. Sk's love you!, but may not be enough to take the line. Good noxious damage.

    To start, I will get points in Wisdom and Strength for the sheer joy of AOE and fast casting stealth/stalk :)
  7. Haun New Member

    Great info. Thanks for the intel, Can’t wait until KoS gets here to try these tips.
  8. Fleshdecay Well-Known Member

    One quick little tip to remember is that AA does not work like it use to back in original KoS. Now you can put AA points in any specific ability in any tree. You do not have to put an AA point in bounty to unlock all the AA trees. You also do not have to start at the top of an AA tree and work your way down for the end line ability. You can start wherever you wish in a tree, as long as you end up with enough AA points to unlock the end line.
  9. Adoninilol Well-Known Member

    The secret to a true baller concealment is to use it right before an auto attack, press the ~ key which triggers auto attack, which then not only gets your auto at the start, but also puts you immediately into stealth without requiring you to press some other button. Also the remainder of this cast order is confusing. Press caltrops, death mark, masked/ambush, go into concealment, then press all your ****** buttons. Unless you're going into a generic aoe fight then start with pre stealth stealth assault and hit massacre because the adds on everything die in like 10 seconds.
  10. Tobias Fünke Member

    I don't know how anyone else plays, but these are some things:
    - Concealment definitely bugs out in the middle of a chain. If there's still time on it you can get yourself back into stealth but often you just have to give up and make sure autoattack is back on. It's rare that I am able to get through all of my stealth attacks with it. I try not to *rely* on it too much. On some fights, like PoS, I'll use it for Stealth Assault and Massacre more than the other attacks. The other thing about it is that on most raid fights the full length of it will delay an autoattack, which at this point is not ideal.
    - I macro Death Mark and Gushing Wound. I usually don't like macros but they're on the same timer and it always works. I keep clicking it til they both go off, tho.
    - I macro Lucky Break and Quick Strike. Again, usually don't like macros but Lucky Break is instacast. I never pay attention to HOs but they finish on their own basically and I always seem to have Swindler's Luck or Bravo's Dance up without needing to try for it, so it can't hurt, right?
    - I start every single fight in stealth. If a mob knocks me out of stealth immediately (happens often in a raid), I'm still not in combat so I can get right back in. I start every single raid fight with Stealth Assault, even if it's a single mob. Get that thing ticking, it will end up being a big part of your DPS.

    Most of the advice is for raiding. Heroic mobs are a joke and if you're in a full group you're going to spend more time trying to get a target before it dies. For that I recommend binding a mouse button or the 'f' key to target_nearest_npc.

    I outparse nearly everyone I play with except for swashies on 3+ mobs or casters on PPR trash. Feel free to msg me in game if you have any questions. I like playing assassin a lot. Good DPS and you have to work for it.
  11. Redlight Well-Known Member

    I like the amount of thought you guys put in here, however, the only actually good piece of advice comes from Adon. Stuff like casting Stealth Assault at the start of combat on a single target mob is just flawed logic, dps-wise.
  12. Tobias Fünke Member

    No, it isn't flawed logic. It's a long cast CA that you would normally not use on a single-target raid mob in your rotation. However you get to front-load it for free on pull, it hits for ~2500-3000 over 12s (short raid mobs are about 15s) and I still cycle through every other CA I have during the fight (except for Massacre), when normally I wouldn't get SA off at all.
    Naneeje likes this.
  13. Tobias Fünke Member

    For example, Sunchild in Al Afaz, Stealth Assault hit 16 times for a total of 8k damage over 60s. 4% of damage on a fight where I used every other CA except for Assassinate because it wasn't up. It would be half as much if I didn't open with it because I wouldn't have time to get it in twice and may not even get to it at all depending on my other stealths.

    To me, what's a mistake is leading with debuffs. There are really only a few named fights in the game where I use the debuffs because nothing else lasts long enough to make it worth spending the time on them vs. doing actual damage. Slip Away is a free out of combat stealth so if you're not opening with a stealth attack of some sort, you're doing yourself a disservice. Then you're only left with Masked Strike, Stalk and Concealment to get into stealth, and as mentioned above, Concealment will bug out and isn't useful on every fight. Stalk is a last-resort to get into stealth if you can avoid it because of its cast time, even with 6s delay weps and almost never gets used on quick fights (which most are). Right now, autoattack is king and your main focus should be getting it on quickly and not delaying it at all.

    Edit: Another thing that should be mentioned is muscle memory. There aren't that many single-mob raid fights in the game, and as soon as you have 2+ stealth assault is an even more crucial opener. So if you're used to opening 90% of fights with it, I'm not sure there's a big point in changing it up for others, especially when there aren't that many other great alternatives.
  14. Adoninilol Well-Known Member

    "Unless you're going into a generic aoe fight then start with pre stealth stealth assault and hit massacre because the adds on everything die in like 10 seconds."

    Read this @Tobias. I promise you that stealth assault in any long encounter (only things that matter btw) will be very low on your parse.

    Either way,
    Press Torture
    Death Mark
    Masked/Ambush
    Concealment
    Stealth attacks that parse less on long fights than the above two buttons.
    Dots.
    Caltrops
    Bottle button for fun.

    Aoe:
    Press Stealth Assault
    Press Massacre
    repeat above cast order, press stealth/massacre on cooldown/save for next set of adds.

    Do some math, see how long adds have to last for stealth assault to beat massacre, if adds are heroic and die in less time than then, prioritize massacre.

    Either way, this entire class in every TLE iteration has just never performed on the same level of sorcerer's, and won't be able to really beat rogues until around EoF, even then, you will never get jcap on this class because sorcs are just leaps and bounds better buff targets for that button. The only reason Jcap even went to our assassin on fallen gate was because all the sorcs were such trash we could never really find four sorcs to jcap, plus confront fear was absolutely bonkers, which is now nerfed.

    This entire server i've heard nothing but assassin's being amazing, when in reality they offer little to no debuffs, subpar damage compared to rogues, underperform in AoE, and can't interrupt every aoe in game, plus concealment is a bag of dicks.

    If you have any other questions/concerns, reroll rogue or sorc.
  15. Tobias Fünke Member

    Read this @Adoninilol "I'd prioritize stealth assault over ambush even on single target assuming it can last the full duration."

    That was you, a couple days ago. So you're arguing with yourself now, I guess.

    Longest fight in the game is PoS and Stealth Assault is 7% of DPS, 2nd after slash and tied with Anuk's. 666 hits. Massacre has 52 hits and sits at 3%. Terrorantula is probably the longest single-target fight and I'm not digging that far back in ACT, but I'm not sure what your point is about how it parses. You're going to be able to get through every CA in your rotation in a long fight, so all that really matters is getting the long recast ones out early so they come up again faster.

    Anyways, the point of the game, at least for me, is to have fun. I've played a swash, a brig, ranger, assassin, SK, Inq, Necro and the assassin is by far the most fun. If min/maxing is all you care about in a 15 year old game, roll what your guildmates tell you, I guess. :) Telling someone who's asking how to play an assassin to reroll just sounds like a poor attempt at trolling to me.
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  16. Adoninilol Well-Known Member

    The argument isn't wether it's a decent button to press, it's wether or not it's worth starting with.

    And yes, it will be high on a two target non linked encounter, that actually allows it to tick out the entire duration, that's a no brainer.

    And no troll, I just know assassin's are a useless class at the moment, they were only as popular as they were in original EoF and beyond because of their sta/max hp debuffs~. Plus Aeralik, the old class designer mained one, and made them pretty good dps classes, and you didn't run things like two mage groups, instead three tank groups which allowed you to actually run double rogue/predator.
  17. Tobias Fünke Member

    If the goal is to get it to tick out on a named encounter, why wouldn't you start with it? What stealth attack is better to front-load, and why? Even on the bosses in Al Afaz that die quickly I'm usually able to cycle through all of the stealth attacks even after starting with SA.

    I agree that starting with Massacre on really short AoE fights makes sense, but Massacre is 60s recast and when your raid is moving quickly, it won't be up at the start of every 8-15s trash fight.
    Naneeje likes this.
  18. Naneeje Well-Known Member

    This is why we have these posts...
    For example, RedLight said "everything else is Flawed Logic" which is incorrect. Regardless if you have high dps from a spell, it's a free cast, does not interrupt anything and when adds die in the first 12 seconds anyway, you just maxed out your dps. So when people figure these little tricks out to increase their dps by 10, 12, maybe 15 extra dps per second, NOW you are parsing higher than the mages, most scouts.
    Try raiding in a guild where the Assassin has no direct raid party buffs, does not give poisons to anyone but a healer, and yet still tops the parse under the Swash who is well buffed. Still outdo most mages because we all have helped each other with these little tricks.
    Now, "Bottle for fun?" racking my brain trying to figure out what the bottle is...
    @ FleshDecay, I had no idea you could put your points into anything on the AA tree Predator, this is really cool, thanks!

    @ Adoninilol, Max dps comes from max DOT's. Damage over time dots with longer durations are cast first.
    Torture, 36 seconds, (helps dot's, but not a dot)
    Quick Strike, (12s)
    Death Mark, (1m 12s, plus DOT of 36s)
    Gushing Wound, (24s)
    Impale, (24)
    So, for this stage, with long casting Stealth, until we get AA into insta-cast, why not cast Stealth, get STealth Assault off while mobs are approaching, help tank get aggro, AA smacks, and you roll. If you are not doing this, then you are losing 108 damage per second for 12 seconds while getting your dots up. I think this is why I parse higher than most assassins in raids. Better use of the casting order.

    @ RedLight, Flawed logic, maybe, but I get 12 seconds of minimum 108 dps than anyone who doesn't do this. Especially since everyone knows adds die fast.

    @ Tobias Funke, For this time frame, this is correct, our logic is sane, but, when KoS comes out and we get those AA, Stalk and Stealth will be insta-cast, and that works during the chain really well. I do use Slip Away and then Stealth Assault on pull on most occassions, yes. I question your use of macro for Death Mark and Gushing Wound, if you are spamming it anyway, why not just have both on the bar so you can see it's up, won't interfere with Auto A. Just a thought.

    @ everyone, Yes, you are all correct, it will not add that much to the parse, but... aside from Swashbucklers, Assassins CAN keep up with mages, even in our poor state right now, by inching and squeezing every drop of dps we can into a fight. Food, drink, Elixir of Deftness, it all adds up to a good parsing Assassin who doesn't just mash buttons :)
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  19. Naneeje Well-Known Member

    If it's a heavy AOE fight, Slip Away to get into Stealth, Stealth Assault for the DOT's first, ALWAYS, and if the fight is going to be short, then Stalk, Massacre. Roll into a mini chain with Eviscerate, Mortal blade, Ambush, finish with Death Blow and you will be at 3-4k above the mages.
    Just not a Swash, cause I am not sure if you figured it out yet, but I haven't found a way a good Swash.
    Crappy one yes, but not a good one :)
  20. Tobias Fünke Member


    I keep death mark by itself on the bar out of the way so I can see if it's not up for any reason. It's the first thing I hit after the first autoattack, so they always both go. It just saves me having to move the mouse before making a decision if I'm going to continue hitting dots/loading up 1m attacks, or go right into stealth attacks depending on what fight it is and what's up depending on how fast we're moving. The reason it's macro-able is because it's a .25s cast time instead of .5s, so it doesn't take as long to queue through as other things, which is why I usually avoid macros. Even torture and caltrops are .5s cast which means you're at .75s counting recovery which is why I don't use them as often as others might on shorter fights. My #1 focus is on fitting damage in between autoattacks, and while those debuffs *may* lead to a tiny damage increase, I really don't believe they're worth sacrificing real damage for. If they were .25s casts I might rethink that.

    Good stuff on the KoS AA stuff, I haven't played an assassin in KoS, just the brig and ranger, so that will all be new to me.